


Phantom Files

by ChaosDragon (PlotWitch), PlotWitch



Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-25
Updated: 2018-05-28
Packaged: 2019-05-13 16:52:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 18,227
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14752653
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PlotWitch/pseuds/ChaosDragon, https://archiveofourown.org/users/PlotWitch/pseuds/PlotWitch
Summary: This is going to be a massive dump file for all of the outlines and ideas I've had over the years for Danny Phantom. A good portion will be fully outlined, and some I will even encourage be adopted. Probably entirely Danny/Sam in pairings. Anything that fully outlined will have a full synopsis if one exists.





	1. Destiny, Rewritten

**Author's Note:**

> This was one of my very first ideas in the DP fandom. It's probably a little rusty because of that, it's about 15 years old, before I'd watched the whole series, and before I'd come up with my concrete opinions on where AP is located and so on. But still good. Feel Free to adopt.

When Danny's 15, something happens that has something to do with Clockwork and it actually goes down a route of life that he had never envisioned. Maybe him waking up, as though from nightmare, and freaking, then realizing it wasn’t real, it didn’t happen. But then not being so sure, when he realizes he’s not alone and Clockwork is there.

“It really happens, doesn’t it?” and Clockwork agrees, it does happen, unless Danny does something to stop it from happening.

(The alternate reality is that because of his pulled ties between ghost fighting, friends, family, and the danger, he begins to lose control, can’t keep it together. Something terrible happens. Maybe he starts seeing Sam, and she gets in the way of a battle. On accident, of course, but still she gets killed. Danny sees it all happen, can’t stop it, and then it’s too late. So, Danny Phantom disappears after that, and then Danny Fenton starts to disappear, buried under the guilt, the responsibility, and when he can’t cope... He’d rather be dead, because it’s just too hard to do it all. Especially with the knowledge that he was responsible for Sam’s death, someone he cares about deeply, and one of his best friends.)

So Danny stops it from happening.

By leaving.

He leaves Amity Park. Hell, he leaves the state and he goes to somewhere else. Some college town? Decent size, northeast, but absolutely has to have a college so he can run into Sam on accident. Thinking Philadelphia, UPenn. Danny is now 19, will be 20 sometime in the next 3 months. He’s a student and has enough credit hours to make him a junior.

Sam is, ironically enough, a sophomore because she took classes at the community college in Amity Park before deciding to go elsewhere, who has just started. Semester has been in session for maybe two weeks before they meet, at Danny’s job. He works at a little café type place, family owned, and is under an assumed dame. Daniel Spencer, maybe. She’s there with a friend, two new friends, both female, one who’s a sophomore, and who happens to have a class with Danny. An elective class, creative writing or something, so that we have an inside to Danny’s notebook and Sam can find out why Danny left and why he’s so afraid to have friends or be friends with her despite how close they used to be.

So the girls and Sam sit down and order, and the order is passed off to Danny because a shift just ended, and he just started. It’s how he pays for things above and beyond the scholarship and grant he has that mostly pay for school, books and rent. The rest is made up by his job, which sucks but pays the bills. He heads over to finish them up, since the bill was already requested, and he gives it over.

And is shocked to see Sam sitting there, smiling up at him.

And he almost freaks when recognition dawns on him, and she tries to make him talk to her. “Danny, oh my god, I found you!” Not much is shared with the other girls right then, and when it is shared it’s later and Danny is already full of Cover Blown™. He refuses to interact, saying he doesn’t know who she is, and she must have him mistaken for someone else. But there’s fishiness, because the sophomore knows that he goes by Daniel.

He manages to get them to pay and gives them their change and heads back into the kitchen to hide until Sam leaves. Sam, however, questions the owner, and then leaves after he demurs about Danny, too. But the owner asks Danny questions, because Sam has implied that Danny is not who he says he is. So, Danny ends up losing his job, though he’s not fired. He has to walk because he’s scared that they’ll check and find out that he’s not exactly truthful. (He goes back later to get all of the info they have on him, in ghost mode.)

Sam was waiting outside, down the block, and sees Danny exit. Also sees him head down an alley before he sees her, and hurries to follow. Danny is in ghost mode when she gets there, and she calls to him to wait, and he sighs, defeated look on his face, and stops before he leaves. She asks him why he acted that way, why he lied, why he’s pretending to be somebody else. He doesn’t answer, and she presses.

Danny gets annoyed and tells her that she just cost him his job, and if he’s very unlucky, she’s going to cost him his life if she keeps pushing. Then he does leave.

(Danny has changed a lot physically and metaphysically. His hair is still black, and a bit longer now, though as shaggy as it ever was. Eyes are still that piercing blue. His body has filled out some from the lean look he had. Still lean, but there’s definition, and his shoulders are much broader. A tribute to dad, I expect. He’s tall, too, probably 6’2”. His powers have changed and grown, too. He’s got enough under his belt that he managed to get rid of Vlad, so there’s definite increase. He doesn’t say he’s going ghost anymore, barely even thinks it as he shifts now, and he can actually phase large objects for short periods of time. Even large groups of people. This will come in handy. He can also use the Ghost Zone to travel the real world. Open a portal to the Ghost Zone, hop in, then back out in another city, state, or even country.)

They run into each other on campus next, and it’s a real shock to her, because she had no idea that he even wanted to go to college, much less had managed to get in to one. And he tries the avoidance thing again. Just gets this look on his face before slipping past her and disappearing down a hallway. Literally, since he’s gone ghost to get away. And this time the sophomore girl is there, and they start working together.

Sam confesses some of it. Not that he’s part ghost, and not what his real name is. But that she knew him when she was younger, and that one day just after his 15th birthday he disappeared. And that his family and friends had worried and tried to find him, but nothing had turned up and, while they hadn’t given up or forgotten, their hopes were dimming. There’d only been three communications since he’d left. A letter the day they found he was gone telling them not to worry or try and find him. It was better this way, safer this way, he couldn’t have it on his conscience. But no one knew what ‘it’ was. A postcard from California on his 16th birthday that he was alive and well. And another from Wisconsin when he turned 18, saying they really didn’t have to worry anymore.

And then she confesses to one other, a letter this time, mailed from right in Amity Park, on HER 16th birthday. _Dear Sam, I know you and Tucker won’t understand why I did this. Sometimes I’m not even sure myself. Just please, trust me, this is the best way, the only way to keep everyone safe. To keep you safe. I’ve thought about you a lot since I left, and I know I did the right thing. All I can say to you is that something really bad was going to happen if I stayed. I miss you. Love, Danny._ And a little something in the envelope that she almost missed. A thin silver band that fit her finger like it had been made for her. The band was engraved with a bit of Celtic knot work, and she wore it always. Shows it to the girl at this point.

She leaves out how the way he signed it made her feel, because she was more than half in love with him when they were 14 and 15, and is still fairly gone on him. She also refrains from mentioning that she and Tucker at least knew that he was alive and okay because of worldwide Danny Phantom sightings. Danny uses the conduits in the Ghost Zone to go to places he’s heard have real problems. Not just fighting ghosts locally anymore.

(Sam has changed a bit too. She’s relaxed a lot, not diehard goth, though she still wears black a great deal. Jeans and skirts, yes, sneakers and boots. Usually a dark colored shirt in the blues and greens or plain black. She has a bohemian-style sweater in black that she usually has with her no matter what. Her hair has grown, she keeps it almost waist length now. Usually in a braid or a ponytail, sometimes in a messy bun. And she’s still minimalist with the make-up. All in all, she’s still Sam.)

So, they end up being forced to talk, somewhat. Danny has no choice because she’s making a stink, and he’s afraid she’ll destroy his new life. He certainly doesn’t want to have to explain how Danny Fenton was the one attending school on Daniel Spencer’s scholarship. No matter that he keeps a 3.8 GPA. So, he talks to her, and she has an idea that he saw something about the future, like the episode where he saw he went evil. So, she ends up telling him that no matter what he saw, it couldn’t happen anymore, he already changed the future.

Which leads to them sort of hanging out. Then sort of dating. Then sort of kissing. Or rather making out. And then the sort of confession that she called Tucker. He’s angry and hurt and shifts to ghost and leaves. Pissed really. The only reason Sam confessed when she did was because she was nervous about Danny’s reaction if Tucker were to just show up. And she was right to be worried; Tucker shows up to Sam’s little apartment and finds just Sam, and she has to tell Tucker that Danny didn’t take it very well.

Tucker starts to console her, thinking that she told Danny how in love with him she was and had been for ages, and Sam says no, she didn’t tell him that. Not yet. And Danny is right behind him them in ghost form. He shifts back to human and scares the bejesus out of them. Sam immediately freaks and gets defensive. “How long have you been there?”

“Not long. I just got here,” he lies smoothly, having heard the entire confession of love. And Tucker clocks him. Then hugs him hard, saying he deserved and, and god it’s good to see him in the skin.

(Tucker’s still a nerd. He’s at MIT himself and doing very well.)

[Side note: paranormal sciences have a lot more attention since Danny left home. And the leaders in it are his parents, because they threw themselves into work after he disappeared. The curious thing is that Danny is taking a course schedule heavy on paranormal stuff and biology type things. Partly he’s looking to understand himself better, as a ghost hybrid and all. It’s let him do crazy things with his powers and all. And partly because it teaches him about the enemy. That’s the core of his life, still ghost fighting. But his electives are heavy in music and writing. Especially the writing, because if it’s for a creative writing class, no one will think the things he writes down are true.]

Friend stuff, then Danny leaves. Tucker is bunking with Sam for the long weekend, and Danny has to go to work. He got a new job as a cook in a bar. Works nights, part time, and gets tips, so the pay’s as good as before, but with a few less hours. They hang, study, catch up, work on convincing Danny to tell his parents, go see them or have them come see him, and then Sunday afternoon Tucker leaves to go to the airport. Danny has sat on the fact that Sam is in love with him all weekend, wanting to do something about, not sure what, then decides to hell with it. He’ll go for it. He’s going with Tucker to the airport, so on the way out he stoops to press a kiss to Sam’s cheek (Tucker knows they’re sort of dating) and says softly to her before rushing Tucker out the door, while she’s still in utter shock, “I love you, too.” As he says it he rubs a finger over the ring she wears, on her left hand, the third finger, right where a wedding band would belong, and gives her a meaningful look.

So, he takes Tucker, still not confessing why he’d left, just telling Tucker he’d be up to see him sometime soon, and he’d think about his parents. We move into the relationship blossoming, and them freely being able to admit that they love each other. Then one day Sam’s friend who’s in Danny’s writing class shows up, kind of worried, and very upset. She has a thick well-worn notebook in her hand and tells Sam that Danny had left it in class before he rushed out to another class.

She’d grabbed it, and hadn’t really meant to pry, but had read the first page. And then more, in growing worry and horror, because while it seems to be a work of fiction, there are things that don’t add up. It’s written almost from first person, and it’s about being a ghost and saving people. And there’s this dream with a girl named Sam who sounds just like the Sam she knows, and the girl died. And then he woke up from the dream to someone telling him he can change it, and isn’t it odd that it seems so real? Because the guy in the notebook sent letters and stuff…

Sam, however, is feeling even worse, because she knows what it is, and knows now why Danny left. Sam now has a terrible choice to make. The girl has to be told, but Sam won’t go behind Danny’s back. So, she asks the girl to stay while she reads through it, saying it’s important, and she’ll explain it later. Which she does, when Danny phases into Sam’s apartment and scares the shit out of the girl. Danny is pissed that Sam didn’t warn him, and then Sam holds up the notebook from where it lay on her lap.

And Danny goes deathly pale.

Because if Sam has read it, she knows everything. The dream, the fact that it wasn’t just a dream, it was a visit of the future. How he feels, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. The battles he fought with himself against despair, loneliness and the fear that he would still seek the escape of suicide. And the sometime desire to want to. But just as bad, the things he’s done besides that. He’s killed. Bad people summoning ghosts, using them for evil. Dark magicians. Because he no longer fights just against ghosts, but against the ways they escape, other than coming through naturally occurring portals.

The girl, naturally, has figured it out, and gasps, “Oh my god, you’re Danny Phantom.”

Danny doesn’t even bother trying to deny it, just admits defeat, and Sam starts smoothing it over, gaining the promise that none of it will ever be revealed. Because the girl isn’t just a classmate, she’s a very good friend of Sam’s. And then Sam finds a way to usher her on her way home or to class or wherever, because she needs to talk to Danny alone, and she thinks he might just need to talk period. He’s carried a lot on his shoulders for almost five years, now, and she knows from the notebook that loneliness is one of his biggest fears.

So, they talk, and she assures Danny that she holds no blame for him now that she knows everything. And why didn’t he just tell her in the first place? Now, when they’d regained each other, or even back then when he was terrified enough to just run? And he doesn’t have much of an explanation other than fear. How could he tell her that he’d seen her death, and it was his fault? This leads to sex, I’m sure. Their first time, both of them, and it can be a good thing.

Danny’s 20th birthday is in a week or so and in the morning, she convinces Danny to contact his parents. If he’s too afraid to go see them, why not ask them to come see him? He doesn’t have to tell them he’s a student, where he lives. Nothing. Just make it a public meeting so that he keeps his anonymity. And Danny plans to take that route. But at the last second changes his mind, right as he picks up the phone and dials the number and his mom answers it.

“Hello?” she says, and when he hears her voice he realizes that Sam’s right, the past is the past and that future is in the past. He’s past it, it won’t happen anymore, he’s not a 15-year-old struggling anymore, he’s a grown man who’s able to do what he has to, and still have something left, that something he didn’t have as a child because he was only a child. And he says, “Mom, it’s me. Danny.”

There is a tear-filled conversation that follows, in which he says he can’t answer all of their questions, not on the phone. They’re questions better suited to being asked in person, and will they please come visit him? “It’s the middle of the semester, and I can’t afford to miss classes. Not when finals are so soon.” His parents are relieved that he’s getting an education, and arrangements are made for him to meet them at the airport the next day.

Danny takes Sam through the Ghost Zone to get to the airport, and she realizes how much more powerful he’s become, because he’s not even the least bit concerned about the Ghost Zone anymore, and he uses his powers with a careless ease that is nothing like the kid he was. The parents get off the plane, see Danny and think for a moment he looks familiar, and then his mom realizes it’s Danny. Now there’s really tears, gruff manly hugs between father and son, and more tears as he clings to his parents.

Between that and a sort of explanation he gets them home. A cab this time, because they don’t know that he’s Danny Phantom. And that explanation isn’t long in coming, because the second he gets them settled into his apartment and the questions come, he asks them to just hang on a second, he has something important to tell them. They glance at Sam, but she doesn’t give a hint, and Maddie is thinking that maybe Danny is going to tell her he’s marrying Sam.

Of course that’s not it, and they’re both in for a shock when Danny goes ghost. But it gives them the chance to realize that he didn’t just run away. And then the real explanations come, by way of the notebook. He holds it out to them, says that he started it not long after he left, and they should read the first few pages. And then there aren’t any more questions about why he left, they understand completely, because what is inside is something that would make an adult lose their focus, much less a teenager.

There are some explanations, and then it’s decided that they should all get some rest, reconvene in the morning. Maddie and Jack are reluctant to leave, but they’ve decided that a hotel would be the best thing. The apartment isn’t very spacious, and they know they’d rather give Danny his privacy. He’s their son, but he’s not the son they knew. Sam spends the night, maybe more than just sleeping. Probably. Definitely.

And the next day the shit hits the fan. Sam isn’t concerned about missing any classes, she can make them up I guess. Danny however, is fanatic, and attends his biochemistry lab the next morning. Then they meet the parents for lunch, and more talk ensues. About Danny, how he survived, school, how Sam and Danny met again. This time they can be candid, because the secret about Danny is out, and it doesn’t matter anymore why they can’t say everything.

Unfortunately, before lunch is over, it happens, and Danny senses a ghost. He discretely excuses himself and goes ghost, then heads up through the roof looking for whatever it is that set his ghost sense off. And it’s there. Something big, something bad. A specific occurrence of ghost that makes him suddenly terrified, the ghost he saw five years before in a dream that wields ectoplasmic bolts of energy with deadly precision.

And he fights it with a vengeance, and a purpose, because he’s terrified of losing Sam, especially now. But fate, destiny, whatever you will call it was already written from the second they met in that little shop, and the fight draws the attention of people in the area. Including restaurant patrons. Sam and his parents are drawn out, and they want to help but no better. Sam only has a little niggling feeling that makes the hair on the back of her neck stand up straight as she watches from the sidewalk, and then it’s too late.

She has a split second to see the bolt of glowing red energy heading toward her, and then it strikes, and she crumples to the ground. Danny screams her name, tries to go to her, but is blocked by the ghost who, in turn, mocks him mercilessly. Maybe if he could have gone to her right then, he could have saved her, but when he sees the specter of her standing there next to her own body, he knows it’s already too late, and it breaks something inside of him.

The fight resumes, and Danny ends up not just sending the ghost back, but utterly destroying it. And then when he gets to Sam, it’s too late even to speak to her ghost. It’s left, moved on or gone to the Ghost Zone. Whichever, it’s not there anymore. Her body, however, is alive.

In the hospital Danny makes the decision that begins the end. Her body is definitely alive, but she’s brain dead. Danny knows this already and knows that her body can be kept alive for a long time while her spirit has already left. So, he makes the choice to try and go after it. He tells his parents he loves them very much, and he’s sorry he screwed things up. He’d been trying to avoid this very thing, and they’ll find out from the notebook eventually the things he’s not explaining.

Then he goes ghost and opens a portal to the Ghost Zone. Once there he uses some type of ghost sense to try and track her, see if she’s there, or see if she’s already gone past where he can go, though he knows he’ll try anyway. But he feels her, and he follows the trail of her unerringly. And when he finds her, he finds her with Clockwork, who is holding her, not allowing her to go on, but not allowing her to go back.

Debate ensues, and Clockwork tells Danny that destiny is written and not always mutable. That this outcome was inevitable, and Danny asks him why would he give the warning if the same thing was only going to happen. And Clockwork tells Danny that it was better to change it a little, to put it off for a time, and allow Danny the slice of happiness with Sam, rather than never knowing. Because it was the never knowing that pushed him over the edge, never knowing what could have happened with him and Sam, never knowing if he could have changed what had happened.

And his answers are here: he could have had happiness, and he couldn’t change her death.

So, Danny makes Clockwork an offer. A demand, really. Take the powers, take everything, just give her back. And Clockwork asks him if he could really go through the rest of his life knowing he gave them up, especially in times when he would want to use them for the greater good. Could he watch people suffer, die even, knowing that he had traded the very things that would have saved them? Danny can’t answer, and says, “Then take me instead. I’ll die without her; I’m not strong enough to lose her again.” And Clockwork takes him up on his offer.

Sam has been silent until this, and begins fighting as Clockwork waves a hand at Danny, and he suddenly shimmers into a true ghost. Sam stops trying to fight, numb and afraid and her heart is breaking. “No,” she whispers, and Clockwork lets her go, and she goes to Danny. But she can’t touch him. She can tell he’s different now, and she starts to cry in earnest, and Danny looks like he’s close to it himself. “I couldn’t just let you die, Sam,” he says softly, reaching a hand out to touch her face, and closing his eyes as it passes right through her. “I know,” she whispers back. “I know, Danny.”

He asks her to tell his parents that he’s sorry, and then Clockwork instructs them that it’s time for both of them to move on. Her back to her body and the human realm, and him to the afterlife. Sam looks a bit defiant at this, Danny resigned, and Clockwork impassive. And it’s done. We’ll follow Sam back, her fading into the real world and her own body as she sees Danny start to disappear in the other realm. She wakes screaming and crying, and it’s viewed as a miracle. But the parents know, and Sam doesn’t even have to say anything more than, “He made his choice.” And they know he chose her, rather than him, and then she curls up on her side and just cries.

Life is attempted to resume, and Danny’s parents go about closing up his apartment, dealing with the loose ends of his sudden death. And they go home. Sam stays, goes to school. Tries to find solace in the notebook, that his parents left with her, because littered throughout it is the way he feels about her, his love for her. And then one cold, lonely, dark and long night, she wakes to something she never expected in a million years.

Danny.

She thinks it’s a dream at first, but when she hears him say her name she realizes she’s awake and reaches a hand out to him. She expects it to go right through him, but it doesn’t, and she sucks in a breath. “Did you know that there are ghosts besides the ones we fought?” he asks her, his voice echoing through the room. He’s wearing the same clothes he wore that day when he died, still has the same bruising and scratches from the fight, and she shakes her head.

“There are,” he says with a smile as he sits down on the bed in a collapsing motion, like he’s exhausted. “And they granted me a wish.” He presses his forehead to hers while her arms clutch at him, holding him tightly. “You’re alive?” she asks. “You’re really alive?” He nods and kisses her. “Apparently, they’re all suckers for a good love story.” She laughs. Close that chapter on that.

And on to what will most likely be the last. Danny and Sam Fenton showing up at his parents’ house, and the parents answering the door. Much shock, much surprise, much relief. And the long overdue explanation: “I gave my life for hers.” He shrugs. “It was a noble and stupid thing to do. But it gave me a second chance.” And the further explanation as a memory from talking to Sam, that Clockwork had rearranged the time line, not just to give them the chance to have that time together, but to give him the chance to earn his life back.

If things had played out the way they had, Danny would have killed himself months after Sam died. But by changing that and allowing them to grow up and fall in love, and have those precious months together, Danny had a reason to sacrifice himself for her, and to get that chance to come back. He’s still part ghost, still has to fight, but now he has his family and friends and his love.


	2. eHarmony

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Feel free to adopt.

I’m thinking that sometime during senior year, in an effort to continue in the denial of how they feel, sometime or another Danny and Sam will turn to an online dating service. Or rather, Danny will turn at Tucker’s suggestion, and Sam will try it for a lark. Because it seems like grand fun to see what kind of people actually do it. So after sorting through the hell of joining an online dating service (Tucker works there as tech support and sets them up on dates from hell) they come across, one or another, a profile that intrigues. Maybe Danny, since Sam is skeptical and wishes to poke fun. And technological sparks fly, as they discover, since Sam answered on a whim, that they have much in common. After a while, they decide to meet. first, Sam doesn't show, sends an apology only to receive a no prob., something unavoidable came up for him too. Both were attending a ghost fight. Next time Danny just doesn’t show. Stopped again by ghost fight. He e-mails her (because you know they've set up other e-mails for this so no one will know) and tells her he's sorry. Maybe this was a bad idea and all. She replies that third time is the charm. So maybe one last try? He agrees and tells her to make up for bailing twice, to meet him somewhere. A fancy restaurant date, with a reservation under a fake name. And she goes. And waits. And waits some more. He’s late. But he shows. And there’s surprise, relief, and extreme pleasure that it's the other. A nice short ending with smiles and the quiet admissions of "I’m glad it's you."


	3. Project WRAITH

Project WRAITH

0\. Initiate: Project WRAITH

Where the G.I.W. fail to eliminate the threat of the Ghost Zone, Section 9 steps in and takes over. The first step is in taking a prisoner, the most powerful ghost that they can find: the ghost known as Danny Phantom. According to their calibrations and tests, his spectral energy meets the potential of Pariah Dark before the Ring of Rage, though they have no idea what level he was at before he donned the crown. And so they set out to take him.

Lo and behold they discover, after close monitoring with the best technology in the United States government (because S-9 doesn't exist on paperwork, unlike the G.I.W.) they discover the secret that the Phantom has fought so hard to protect. That he is still human, and that he is also Danny Fenton as well as Danny Phantom.

Their mission just changed, because the offensive potential of someone who can make themselves not exist is far too great to pass up. S-9 takes Danny when he's 15, and though the Fentons and his friends search for him up to and including FBI help in finding a kidnapper, nothing is found.

This is where the real story starts, because while Danny is in the hands of S-9, he's being programmed.

 

1\. (and onward)

We pick up ten years later with Tucker, Sam and Jazz all catching up on a weekend get together in Amity Park to celebrate Jazz's completion of her apprenticeship to B.D. Wong, one of the best profilers the FBI has.

When Danny was never found Jazz's focus turned from general psychology to criminal psychology, and she applied to the FBI and was accepted upon receiving her Masters in C.P. at the age of 23. She's been a full agent for three years now and is now a full-fledged member of the profiling unit.

Sam flew Tucker in from New York, where he lives most of the time. He works for a small technology company that is a leader in combining robotics with nanotechnology. Tucker fast-tracked through a tech university and used a summer job at Axion to get on with this tech firm when he was still in school and only nineteen.

Sam has gone in an unexpected field: science. She's a medical researcher and spends her time commuting from Amity on the weekends to Chicago during the week, where she keeps an apartment for while she's at work.

So they all meet at a little cafe and, despite the early hour, order mimosas for a toast to Jazz. And after Jazz gets this little sad look and lifts her glass and toasts Danny, to which Tucker kind of clears his throat and tells them that there's something he needs to tell them. That last week, while he was in Manhattan, he saw Danny. And then there is silence.

 

They dwell on it and Tucker's surety (despite eventually chalking it up to wishful thinking) that it was Danny for weeks, but life has returned to normal some three months later when out of the blue Sam comes home to Amity Park after a very long week to find her answering machine is overflowing with messages from an Elizabeth Andrews.

Sam is confused because she has no idea who Elizabeth Andrews is, but before Sam can even think about calling the number she left the phone rings again, and it's Elizabeth Andrews. And the first thing that Elizabeth Andrews asks Sam once she answers the phone is if she's the Sam Manson who went to Casper High with Danny Fenton and Tucker Foley. When Sam cautiously says yes, the woman on the phone gets really frantic with excitement.

"Oh, thank god, I thought I had the wrong one, but the Fenton's aren't listed and I had to tell someone who could get the news to them," she babbles while Sam thinks to herself this is exactly why the Fenton's have an unlisted number now--the media attention when Danny was kidnapped.

But when the woman stops for breath Sam asks her who the hell she is to know those things. Turns out that Elizabeth Andrews is Star Andrews, one of her fellow Casper alumni who relocated to L.A. after high school and has managed a steady stream of medium to high level modeling jobs ever since. "I'm so glad I got a hold of you, I had to tell you."

And Sam's patience is wearing thin, she all but growls, "Tell me what?"

Star gets quiet for a minute, and then says, "I saw Danny Fenton last weekend here in L.A."

This leads to an almost frightened phone call to Tucker in NYC and then three-wayed to Jazz at Quantico in Virginia as Sam tells them what Star—Elizabeth—just told her. And from there to the reluctant decision that maybe they should tell the Fentons. In the end they decide not to, but as more time passes there is still no trace of the boy named Danny Fenton, and all they can think is that it's probably better that then never told his parents that they thought he was still alive.

 

The next chapter is cut to something much more dark and anonymous, even though we know that it's Danny we're with. Following the Wraith as he slips in and out of a hefty security system and carries out an assassination. It’s detailed, but quick and efficient. Once he's back out he says into thin air, "Nine-seven-two-four-eight-four," and a small place in the shell of his ear warms and tingles as he hears a voice say, "Mission status?" He answers as if he didn't just kill someone. "Complete, deceased." He’s given the order to return, says, "Comply," and disappears.

 

More time has passed, it's roughly eight months on, and Sam is working late on a Thursday night monitoring some cultures that she hopes will help regenerate dying cells to a healthy state, i.e. an Alzheimer cure. Her replacement had a flat and when he finally shows she hands over her book and grabs her bag heading for home without a single unwearied thought in her head. Gets there, showers, picks at a bowl of sliced fruit before settling down on the couch to try and catch some news to unwind. She watches for a a few minutes before eyes start to close and she turns it off knowing that the only thing in her near future is her bed. Until she places the remote on top of the TV and turns around and... finds herself on the business end of a gun, and Danny holding the other end.

It's a point blank assassination, as he coldly orders her to turn around, and then down on her knees. She thinks wildly how this could be the Danny she knows, and asks him about it as she obeys blindly. She's arguing with him, and knows that it's not going to work when he tells her in that same dead and empty voice to be quiet.

She feels the muzzle pressed to the back of her skull, and she tenses, the beginnings of tears streaking down her face. Then, "Please, Danny, I missed you."

And he hesitates, takes a step back, then fires twice into her back before reporting in.

"Nine-seven-two-four-eight-four," and the same feminine voice.

"Mission status?" He answers but his eyes aren't as steady as his voice.

"Complete, deceased." He's given the return order again, and whispers, "Comply." But he lingers for a moment looking at the slim figure lying on the floor, his heart racing and hurting in his chest. It isn't familiar, and it scares him. After a moment, he turns and disappears through the door.

 

By the next morning Tucker is at Sam's apartment wanting to know what happened to his best friend, and she's just about stable enough to try and tell him. All he knows is he got a phone call in the middle of the night telling him he needed to come to Chicago. Now. Because Danny had been to see her and... And that was where it became hysterical and unintelligible.

So here he is, so is she, coffee mostly drunk (by her) and food mostly ate (by him), and Sam hands Tucker two blue rubber bullets. He looks at them and then up at her wanting to know why she has them, and then she turns and lifts her shirt so that he can see the dark blue and green and black bruises that are spread out from two solid black spots on her back.

Tucker asks her, incredulously, that someone shot her, and makes the assumption aloud that Danny saved her, and Sam's eyes close and he sees tears starting again, at the corners and then to slip and slide down the curve of her cheeks. She says, "No. Danny was the one who shot me."

And now the hunt is on, since they know he's alive, but can't for the life of them figure out why he'd try to kill Sam. Sam conjectures that he didn't even seem to know who she was. Tucker leaves with the hunt just begun and no clues so far, but they coordinate by phone and internet. By mutual agreement Jazz is left out of the loop for the time being because it was an attempted murder, and Jazz would be bound by law to go to the local police about it, or have the self-recrimination of having broken the law.

 

They both begin hunting up records for people who match Danny's physical appearance, but it's Sam who thinks to start looking up newspaper articles on unsolved and inexplicable homicides in the classic execution style, specifying circumstances that only someone who can walk through walls can achieve. And she finds them. Tens and dozens, and Sam finally finds herself struck dumb when she tallies them into the hundreds.

She bypasses Tucker, only sending him an e-mail of what she's found before calling Jazz and asking her if she can clarify any details with her connections. Jazz gets Sam's list and immediately manages to, within the first night of researching knocking the list of several hundred down to just a hundred or so. And these hundred she knows intimately, because it's a case Dr. Wong has assigned her to work with him, with the killer being presumed as an assassin. And they're actively looking for this one because they've never come across such an efficient and proficient assassin before.

 

So now Sam knows what Danny's been up to, though she admits to Tucker that she's terribly confused about the way he acted with her. She wants to try and find him, but she doesn't have any idea where to start. That's when Tucker gets a lead—he sees Danny in New York again, this time not in Manhattan, but he follows him there. When he tries to follow Danny into a residential skyscraper he's turned away at the door. "I'm sorry, sir, residents only."

But Tucker plays dumb and says he must have the wrong building and heads off as he pulls his cell out and calls Sam to tell her. Sam says she'll come, only as soon as she can. Tucker queries, having expected her to drop everything, and Sam tells him they've had positive results with the Alzheimer cultures, and she can't leave while they're starting a new batch of cultures. By the end of the week the new cultures are begun, the results are even better, (and yes there's a point in that) and she's secure enough to convince her bosses that she needs a little vacation. A healthy donation helps that, and Sam is on her way to New York by Friday night.

 

By Saturday evening Sam has everything she needs to walk into Danny's building with impunity, having placed bribes in the proper hands and succeeded in getting put on the pass list of regular visitors. The night man is replaced with a new one so that she can frown at him and imply that he's new, and won’t be more than new for questioning her right to be there, especially when he checks the list of registered guests and sees her as one of apparent long standing.

Thus and so, Sam is in Danny's building, though without Tucker, and her only weapon is a tiny can of mace that she's not even sure if she can use on him. It's still Danny, and even though logically she knows he's dangerous to her, the rest of her can't seem to fall in line. And when he answers the door the almost blank look on his face is confusing enough, without the way he yanks her in and slams her into the back of the now closed door, gun pressed to the back of her head.

"You're supposed to be dead," he whispered harshly before triggering his link to his handler (need better word) and telling her that there's a six-nine-five in progress at his location. Danny lets Sam go long enough to escort her to a chair and sit her down, then calmly sits with his gun trained on her until a key turns in the lock of the front door and a female shape enters the darkness that Danny has arranged.

 

Much to Sam's surprise, the woman who enters is Valerie, and Valerie doesn't look that surprised to see Sam. Actually, she looks kind of annoyed. "You should have been here earlier this week. They just did another memory purge on him at 2300 hours yesterday."

Sam gives her a very sophisticated 'WTF?' type noise and glances at Danny and the empty look behind the gun.

Val glances, too, and says, "Stand down, Wraith."

Without a second thought Danny drops the gun to his lap, and then holsters it as Val motions for him to stand. "Go prowl around for an hour."

Again the order is obeyed, and Valerie and Sam are now alone. The moment Danny is gone, Val's face suddenly gets tired. "Do you know it took me four years to get him to go after you?" she asks, and Sam is almost furious. "But it was the only way. I couldn't just contact you or Tucker, and I never knew that they were doing things like this when I joined."

Sam is taken aback as she realizes that Valerie isn't a bad guy, and that Valerie is unhappy and afraid. "Joined who?" And Val tells her about S-9.

Val is still going when Danny returns and stands blankly behind her where she sits, listening without emotion as she tells how she corrupted his programming and sent him on a job that never actually existed. Well, yet, because Val knows that Sam is actually on a list of people being watched, though Tucker isn't. That's because Tucker, however unwittingly, works for a small company that is backed financially by S-9. Jazz is safe because she's government.

So Sam is in shock and almost afraid of the way Danny just stands there. So she asks about it and Val says to her, "This is their most successful project, subject nine-seven-two-four-eight-four, better known as Wraith."

Not much of a change from Phantom, and Sam says it, but Val shrugs and cites her bosses for lack of imagination. And it finally comes to it that Sam asks why. And Valerie can't exactly answer her. She wavers between how it's wrong, he's not just a ghost, he has people who love him who miss him... And Sam realizes that no matter what, Val must have loved him at one point. But now there's nothing left of Danny Fenton, and she hates it.

"So what now?"

And Valerie stands and tells Danny, "Wraith, Mission Protocol Blackout."

Sam barely breathes as she watches Danny pull a knife from somewhere (and she really doesn't want to know where from, it's just freaky) and run the blade along the inside of his ear. Then he jabs at it and lifts out a metal and plastic device that is gives off a soft glow as he drops it to the ground and smashes it underfoot. "Instructions?" he asks.

"There's a traitor inside S-9," Val says, and Sam knows that it's Val even as she manipulates Danny. "Radio silence, no contact, everyone is a possible threat. Your objective is to protect Sam Manson. Disregard Protocol 19; she is not a target." She turns to Sam and tells her to brace herself; Danny will take them both to S-9. She'll need a few things if she's going to keep him safe. Sam gives her a questioning look, but says nothing as Danny touches them both on the shoulder and the world goes blurry.

Sam thinks they're flying but before she can even think they're intangible and inside a dark office. It's Valerie's, and she hesitates as she reaches for the lights. "It'll be more suspicious if I turn them on, but we need them," she says almost apologetically but Sam stops her before she can, calmly saying, "Danny can make light."

Valerie looks at her oddly, but she asks Danny to do it, never addressing him as anything but Wraith. He does, and there's regret because no matter how closely she's worked with him, even as Project Wraith, Danny Fenton is still closer to Sam. Val begins digging through her desk and hands Sam some sealed notebooks, a small case that holds a syringe and vials of a clear bluish liquid, and a gun.

Danny, it seems, is already at home collecting a duffel bag and tons of ammunition and a few more weapons. Then Val listens at the door with a frown. "I bypassed the security feeds before I went to his apartment. We should be safe as long as no one is here."

Sam follows her out and they run into no one as Valerie leads her to a room that is locked and guarded by retina scans. Val goes through the scan, and then all three of them are inside. The room is backlit from behind shelves that line the walls. Every foot or so on the shelves are little glass or crystal spheres that look like they should be clear, but are cloudy once you look into them. Valerie closes the door behind them all and then raises the lights. There is no fear now, there is no window in the door.

Sam finally asks what they all are, there must be hundreds of them, and Valerie tells her, "These are his memories."

Sam is suitably horrified, and Val is maintaining something akin to stoicism as she tells her that these are the things that make him Danny Fenton. That S-9 siphons off the things he remembers every four days or so, that the memories seem to be an unending supply because Danny Fenton remembers a lot about everything. Especially Sam, and Valerie turns a little remorsefully to Sam.

"They're still in him," she says. "They're just... disconnected. There is no way to put them back, not yet, but I don't really have a choice about this. It's the only way to get him out of here and to stay alive myself. I just want you to know exactly what you're up against when you're alone with him."

Sam looks skeptical.

"He won't hurt you," Val says, "Not physically. But he won't remember you for days right now, and when he does remember it's going to be hard for him. The more he remembers the more Danny will be there, and the more Danny will know what he's been doing for ten years." She gets a very sober look on her face. "Trust me, if there's still enough Danny in there, he'll need your help."

Then Val grabs a metal pole that was leaning against the wall behind the door, and without warning starts smashing the spheres. Val really wreaks havoc, and Sam swears she can hear people from Danny's past, herself included, as each one is cracked, smashed, and whatever is inside goes up in smoke. It breaks her heart, but Danny is beside her, passive and immobile.

Then Val turns to Danny and tells him to shoot her. He doesn't hesitate, but whips the 9mm out and fires off three rounds at her, one hits dead center, the second just over her heart, the third skips higher to the shoulder and draws blood as Val falls backward.

Her eyes are closed, and Danny turns to Sam, takes her hand, and drags her invisibly back down the halls to the office and the bags. Then they're gone again and Sam is telling him they need to go back and help her and why did he shoot her. He's cold as they wind up at an unfurnished and empty apartment somewhere in NYC, saying, "She's my superior officer, she gave me a direct order. I obeyed."

Sam jerks away, bitterly asking, "And you always obey orders?"

He nods and sets about doing something or other, then leaves her alone. He is now a full day into the four until the memory wipe becomes a necessity. Sometime in the next 24 hours he'll start remembering things.

 

Sam wakes up to find she's still alone, and that the door isn't just locked, it seems to be... melted? She curses Danny, because he obviously melted the locking mechanisms and the hinges, and since it swings in, she can't work up enough force to rip it off. She starts digging through what Val gave her and finds the sealed notebooks, sees that one has a '1' scratched on it and opens it, breaking the taped seal.

She finds out that this is a copy of the log book for Wraith's missions. Valerie has included handwritten notes on post-it's, they detail some of the memory flashes Danny's had while he was under her command, but after a few minutes Sam doesn't want to see any more of it. She doesn't really want to know what a quick and efficient killer he's become.

She opens the second, and though it's horrifying, she can't help but read it. It's nothing but a compilation of classified documents concerning what they did to Danny from the moment they captured him to the moment he was given to Valerie. It sickens her, because she knows that they must have spent so much time breaking him down before they started erasing his memories.

Once she's done, she's still alone and the sun is starting to sink. She's hungry, getting cold since the sun is sinking and the temp is dropping, and there's nothing for her to eat or warm up with. So she digs her cell phone out of her pocket and calls Tucker to tell him what she's learned. And that she has no idea where she is, but she can't get out and is going to starve or freeze unless Danny comes back.

Tucker tells her he'll try to track her down, and Sam hangs up thinking that maybe Danny will be back soon. He is, and he starts to take her somewhere else, to which Sam argues with him, says no, and refuses. He doesn't give her a second chance, only pulls his gun and shoots her in the thigh. She passes out after a moment from the pain, and Danny takes her to the newly secure location that he plans on protecting her at.

 

When Sam wakes she is competently bandaged again, and she has no idea at all where they are. She assumes that they're still in New York, but it's an upstate feel because the house she's confined to is surrounded by forested area. It's a two story house, though the only thing on the second floor is the massive bedroom she wakes up in and the attached bath. She'll find out later that the house belongs to Danny, though the paper trail to get to him is massive. According to any and all paperwork barring what is locked inside the house itself, the house doesn't exist, has no address, and the land is held in trust for someone who is presumed missing with the land reverting to charity once said person is dead.

Danny is not there again when she looks for him, and she's beyond pissed at him. And a little afraid; after all, he did shoot her just because she argued with him. And forget the not hurting her physically, though she supposes that getting her to a safe house is more important than making sure she's in perfect health. She calls Tucker while she's looking for him, and manages to grab a few minutes with him. The signal is sketchy at best, but she manages to tell Tucker that she's been taken somewhere, and that Danny shot her, but she's okay even if it hurts like a bitch, and she'll call him back when she knows something that'll help.

She hunts up the kitchen, and it's well stocked, and there's a bowl of fruit on the counter. It is prominently placed, and Sam heads right for it. She has no idea where he got some of the fruit, because in rural New York in the middle of winter, mangos and strawberries are hard to come by, but they're there. A bottle of water from the fridge finishes her meal off, and he pops back in and startles her. She's surprised to see a little more humanity in his eyes, and he's not as mechanical as he asks her how she is.

In fact, that's the biggest realization for her, because she doesn't think that before he would have asked. And there's the stumbled across remembrance that Sam doesn't eat meat to add to that.

After she's eaten and Danny tells her that he made the house as secure as he could, she asks him where they are. He refuses to tell and she drops the argument not wanting to be shot again. It's getting dark when he tells her he needs to treat the gunshot wound. He does so quickly and efficiently, and Sam wonders if he's being mechanical again. Then he asks her if they had been...

"We were friends, Danny. Very good friends."

He avoids her for the rest of the night, spends most of his evening in the living room cleaning his weapons and making sure that everything is fully loaded and there are spare clips easily accessible throughout the house. Sam watches him for a while then finds her own way off to explore, try and relax. Her leg hurts pretty badly, but not as bad as earlier, and she's trying to find something to take for it.

He finally comes across her as she's digging through the cabinets in the upstairs bathroom looking for Tylenol or something. She tells him what she's looking for and why, and he digs a bottle out of his pocket and tosses it to her. It's Percocet, and she's surprised that he even has them. He doesn't comment and tells her she should only take half, and then go to sleep.

 

She wakes up to find him sitting in a chair next to the bed, watching her. She's still woozy from the Percocet, but she doesn't need to be sober to see that there's something very different about the man who's watching her and the man she spoke with the day before—hours before. His eyes are no longer an empty and clear blue, they're dark, shadowed, sad, afraid, and he's almost frowning as he watches her. She sits up.

"What's wrong?" Sam asks, and when Danny answers he only leans across the edge of the bed and kisses her.

She protests and he pulls back and tells her, however uncertainly because he's so unfamiliar with emotions now, "I used to love you," and then kisses her again. Crawls into the bed and proceeds to begin ravishing her.

He only stops with her protests of, "You're not supposed to hurt me, Danny," which is distinctly breathy, and he looks at her with his hands in places better not mentioned and both of them mostly unclothed.

"Does this really hurt?" he asks softly, and when she can't answer him he continues along.

Nearing the culmination she whispers, "Danny, please," quietly and desperately, but if she'd been asked was she was saying it for, she wouldn't have been able to tell him.

 

This time when she wakes up alone in the house she's almost grateful, because she isn't exactly sure what happened in those dark hours just before dawn. She hurts, and it's more than just the physical pain that she's been left with. It the soul deep anguish born from knowing that there had been a time that the Danny Fenton she knew had loved her, been in love with her. She cleans herself up, takes care of the gunshot wound herself because she has no intention of letting Danny near her anytime soon, and finds her cell phone.

Once she has Tucker she tells him point blank that she doesn’t care how he does it, she needs him to find her. Danny… he isn’t Danny anymore and she can’t handle him. Tucker asks her if she’s okay, if he shot her again. It’s half joking, but the quiet no is enough to put Tucker on alert. His questions meet with resistance, but Sam doesn’t tell him anything, and he tells her he’s going to call Jazz and see if she can bring some FBI resources to discretely help.

 

Jazz is most definitely called in, but without anything there isn’t much she can do. Work the fic from their end for a chapter or so, with more investigatory work and Jazz wondering about Tucker’s sudden reticence. This will give me a chance to show how Jazz uses her intelligence to a devastating end and figures out that they found Danny, and that apparently Sam is with him.

And once Tucker confirms, Jazz makes the shocking conclusion that Sam isn’t exactly with him of her own free will, and that’s when Tucker begins spilling some of the truth. He knows that she’s hurt, she said that Danny shot her in the leg, and Jazz begins wondering what the hell is going on, but Tucker refuses to tell her most of it because, and he says it plainly, he doesn’t want to make her have to compromise her loyalties to the FBI or her brother.

By telling her that he’s already forcing her to choose a little, but Tucker looks so miserable and worried because he knows what happened to Danny. Sure, he’s pissed at Danny for shooting Sam, but she told him what Valerie told him, so he tries to temper it with that. End the Tucker and Jazz show with them finding a weak but traceable signal on Sam’s cell phone when Sam calls once more and Tucker makes her leave it on until the battery dies.

 

Sam is very relieved when Tucker and Jazz show up to rescue her during one of Danny’s habitual absences. The best she can tell is that Danny is making forays into the local town for supplies when he does this. Maybe surveillance, maybe something else, but whatever he’s doing he’s not around to witness Jazz and Tucker drive up and come to rescue her and, presumably, Danny.

Since there are no vehicles Jazz suggests parking her SUV in the garage, and once that’s done there’s no way to tell anyone has come because a light dusting of snow covers the tire tracks. Jazz is appalled to see the way Sam looks. Tired, jumpy, and the bandage on her leg needs changing again because Sam obviously has made the wound bleed again.

Jazz changes it for her and notes bruises where there shouldn’t be any, especially on the insides of her thighs. Maybe some fingerprints on the outside, and when Jazz compares that to what she’s seen she can only come to the conclusion that Sam was an unwilling participant in everything that’s happened, not just the victim of a kidnapping.

She asks Sam if she wants to talk about it while Tucker isn’t present, Sam says no, and Tucker wanders back in with a gun in hand. Sam only says, “Danny’s,” to explain its presence, and Tucker sits it down. And that is when Danny shows up. And the second he sees intruders two side arms come out, one in each hand, and he aims unerringly for his sister and best friend.

It’s a standoff because Tucker has no weapon (and I’m sure he couldn’t use one even if he hadn’t dropped the gun after his explanation) and Jazz is just as quick with her gun, a well learned habit from the academy: when someone points a gun at you, point yours right back at them. Jazz orders Danny to put the gun down. He doesn’t, he doesn’t say anything, until he has a disturbing memory flash.

Part of it is vivid, with a pretty little red haired girl that resembles the woman in front of him, teasing him and laughing, eyes flashing.

Danny hesitates, takes a step back, but his guns remain up and resolute as the memory flashes suddenly fades away until its nothing more than a memory remembered as a dream, and Danny’s looking the most human he’s looked since Sam first saw him the night he tried to murder her.

She moves past Jazz and goes to him, which confuses Jazz since she assumes it was rape, plain and simple, but Sam doesn’t look scared or nervous at all as she lays a hand on Danny’s right arm, the one aimed at Jazz, and starts softly talking to him. She gets him to lower the gun on Tucker, but he’s more hesitant to lower the one on Jazz since she’s still tracking on him.

Now Jazz knows that Sam has never said her name, or even Tucker’s, and she can tell without even thinking about it that he has no idea who she is. And then he takes another step back, stumbling, the gun falls out of his hand like he’s forgotten it even existed.

“Jazz?” he asks, and like that the tension runs out of her because that voice is her brothers. A little older, a little different, but that’s still Danny in there, and whatever is going on is much deeper than she can even begin to guess, and she knows it.

They all wind up stuck away in the house for that night and well into the next day with Sam telling everything she knows, and Danny spending his time in and out because sometimes he doesn’t care and he’s the cold person Sam recognizes as Wraith, and sometimes he’s another person altogether, a person who’s confused beyond belief, and seems to remember things, but nothing is ever really connecting.

(The more time that passes the more his behavior becomes erratic because he’s not getting his habitual memory wipes that keep him the calm, cold, trained assassin that the government created.)

 

It comes out that it’s because of Tucker’s little technology, that he can’t connect with what he does remember. Danny doesn’t seem to be too put out with that, he’s more annoyed by it than anything else right now. This much is attributed to what they did to him before they started selectively severing memory connections.

At any rate, Tucker explains the tech that he designed to them. What it does is sever the synaptic connections between neurons with memory based information and the rest of brain function. He pioneered under grant, but was told it was designed for excising memories that were traumatic and detrimental to the subject’s wellbeing and functioning.

It was never designed to remove what makes a person a person, because it’s irreversible. It severs the connection by selectively causing some brain function to die, much like some mental diseases do. In fact, Tucker points out, the function is based wholly off of Alzheimer’s, because he didn’t want to destroy all brain function, just memory.

 

This all leads to a lot of personal issues for every character.

 

Sam, I’m sure to everyone’s surprise, isn’t traumatized like I’ve tried to make everyone think. She takes a great deal of comfort in the knowledge that he loved her, at least for a time, and her main problem with what happened is that the man was a virtual stranger. He wasn’t, still isn’t, the Danny she loved as a child, the Danny she still wants to love. And she worries how he’ll react to knowing that once he reclaims himself, though she knows that it won’t happen to the extent that she wants it to.

But still, there’s a piece of Danny in there that will be appalled at what happened, and that’s the piece she worries about. She doesn’t want him to be strange around her, though she knows she is around him. It was her first time, and not the most wonderful of experiences. But it was good, good enough that she wouldn’t mind a repeat performance. And that makes her feel guilty.

 

Tucker feels guilty; he feels it no matter what. He’s a big reason why the tech that did this exists, and to an extent he believe he has to take the blame for it. But the mess for Tucker gets compounded when sometime during that night, well after explanations are given and plans are being made, he gets up for a drink and finds Danny in the kitchen area, standing as still as a statue and staring out of the massive glass windows that look out on the snow covered trees, and the falling snow.

Tucker says Danny’s name and he doesn’t move, so Tucker just gets his drink, but before he goes back in he says Danny’s name again, and then , “Danny, are you okay?”

And when Danny turns his eyes are red and wet and he looks confused and afraid as he answers, “I think I hurt her.”

Tucker gives him that blank face that means utter disbelief, the one that says, _And you’re just now realizing this?_ He says, vocally, “You did shoot her, Danny.”

And Danny shakes his head, rubs his hand across his face and stares at the tears in his fingers without really understanding them. “No. After. I think I hurt her… her face was wet. She was crying?”

Tucker’s a genius, it only takes him a moment to catch on, and, well, he attacks Danny. A wonderful punch that takes the man while he’s completely off guard and vulnerable, and sends Danny flying back into the windows to leave a spider web pattern of cracks through it. Safety glass, thank god, and Danny doesn’t react the way Tucker’s mind was telling him he would.

Inside his head Tucker believes that Danny will jump up and try to hit him back—actually hit him back since Danny is without a doubt a superior fighter. But Danny doesn’t. He just stays collapsed against the wall, eyes open and vague as they look up at Tucker.

There are memory flashes going on with Danny, he’s remembering Tucker for the first time, and by the time Jazz and Sam rush in Danny knows, really knows, who Tucker is, and much to everyone’s surprise he says, “Where you’d learn to punch like that, Tuck?” The shock of having Danny back, even if it doesn’t last, sends them all silent and gaping and that’s about when Danny passes out.

 

Through it all, especially the patch job Jazz does on the back of Danny’s head where the skin was split on impact with the glass, Jazz has to wonder what she’s doing. She knows, logically, that Danny is a trained killer. But he’s still her baby brother, and it wasn’t his fault. She’s sure of that, but she knows that the odds of Danny ever getting out of the dozens (hundreds) of murder charges that she can finger him with are slim to none.

Hell, for that matter, she knows he’ll never be brought up on charges. The second S-9 discovered that any of them, especially the family member that happens to be a federal agent, knew about what was going on with Danny and were (however unlikely) prepared to go public, they’d have Danny removed from the equation. If they had Danny as an assassin… And Sam had said that Valerie claimed Danny as their biggest success.

There are more where he came from; and any number of them would be equipped to deal with him, and them if they got in the way. She’s more than a little afraid of getting busted for helping him, but she can’t not help him, and it’s a nice headache for her to keep sorting through.

 

While Danny is passed out the three discuss their options some more with the end result that they don’t have very many. Jazz has taken off citing an emergency and has to be back to Quantico by the following evening, and Tucker doesn’t want to risk his job either. There’s too much riding on him getting into the system and hunting down more information that S-9 has access to. And he wants to truly delete any information about the memory wiping technology that is still in the mainframes at his office. When Tucker tells them what he’s going to do a plan begins to form.

Between Jazz and Tucker both, they have a pretty good chance of finding out some stuff about S-9 that will help. There’s even the chance that Tucker might be able to track Valerie down and run into her as an old friend, to avoid suspicion, and get some more information that way. Because they all know that S-9 needs to be shut down, and the best idea they have is to go public.

Sam will stay with Danny, or make him stay with her, rather, because she can’t afford to leave her job alone much longer, either. That and she really wants to get back to work, because there’s an idea that’s growing inside her head and successfully finishing her experiments are vital to it.

It’s all capped when Danny wakes up and joins the group planning, not as a barely human automaton or someone who’s too disturbed by fever dreamed memories, but as someone who bears a passing resemblance to the Danny they once knew. And this Danny, this very dangerous man, says that they need to shut S-9 down. Period. Arguments arise, but Danny silences them all. “How can they go after any of us for destroying something that never existed?”

 

So by Wednesday morning Sam is back at work, and with a new fervor. She knows that the lab is manned on weekends by a schedule of volunteers and only changes for trades. By some miraculous stroke of luck, this weekend is Sam’s weekend to take the night shifts that run seven to seven, and she needs to finish her new batch of cultures by then. They’ve shown great progress, but are relatively unstable over longer periods of time.

She needs them stable, because she wants to use them on Danny; Tucker’s memory technology was designed based on the way neurons are seemingly cauterized at the synaptic level—the parasitic protein complex she’s helping to develop is supposed to reverse (or at least minimize) that kind of damage. It will go between the three of them (four if I include Valerie) and what they’re doing, especially Jazz and her work inside government mainframes. Her boss is going to call her on her secret keeping, but more on that later.

 

I’m toying with the idea of making Tucker and Jazz get closer and perhaps develop an interest in each other that is barely acted upon. Maybe a kiss, and the promise of giving it a go. Follow Valerie a little more closely because she’s already sabotaged S-9 from inside and she’s skirting being found out as it is. She’s still safe, but the possibility remains.

When she starts looking for more answers on Tucker’s behalf (he’s trying to find a way into the S-9 mainframe and she’s helping) Valerie can be discovered to be compromised. Valerie is shot on sight when they believe she’s trying to burn the main frame out, but what none of them knew is that there’s someone else inside S-9 who disagrees with what they were doing with Danny, who is still part human, and the rest of the subjects, who aren’t.

This guy, Charles Carmichael, makes a faint cameo appearance, he’s not being explored deeply, he’s only featured as the one who takes the scanning device Valerie was using to help Tucker get in, and misdirects the brass into thinking that she was compromised by an outside source and that Wraith wasn’t an active part of it. He finishes the scanning and delivers to Tucker, along with the knowledge that Valerie is dead now, and that he’s about to disappear, and he wishes them luck with taking S-9 down.

 

Meanwhile Sam is making it through Wednesday to Friday, trying to take care of the science work and deal with a very odd Danny who alternates between completely silent and brooding and then a faint shadow of the happy teenager she knew. She can tell he’s unhappy because there are so many pieces missing, but the pieces that are still there are undeniably Danny, and it makes her heart ache.

Between trying to coordinate with Tucker and Jazz Sam is running herself ragged, but doesn’t dare do any less. Hell, she knows she’d try to take the Friday night shift on top of her assigned Saturday and Sunday nights if it weren’t for the fact that she can’t pull all day and then all night. She gets the call about Valerie’s death very late Thursday night, past midnight when she was already asleep, and Danny wakes to the phone.

He doesn’t know what is said, she answers it in her room behind closed doors, but he does hear her when she hangs up and begins to cry. Sure, she never like Valerie that much, but she never really wanted her dead, and especially not for trying to help Danny. Danny takes himself through the door and takes up the role of comforter. It’s the closest he’s come to who he was before, and while she cries he tells her how sorry he is for everything that has happened, how much he wishes it could be different, and how sorry he is that it isn’t.

She’s surprised, actually, that he’s there when she wakes again. He’s sitting on the floor, leaned up against the wall, watching her sleep. It’s vaguely creepy, but touching, and comforting despite that fact that he’s practically a stranger. This morning she lets him take care of the gunshot wound, and he follows her invisibly throughout the day as he has been.

But this night when she gets home with him, she’s feeling a bit differently toward him than she has been. This evening she makes no effort to cook her usual fare and orders pizza, exactly as she did when they were kids. Well, barring Tucker’s slaughterhouse of doom… It’s afterward, after she’s tossed boxes and paper plates, and the world is dark and edging towards sleep, when the television is finally silenced and he smiles at her, that she reaches up to him and pulls his mouth down to hers.

 

Fic reconvenes the next night, an hour after Sam’s shift has started and when she knows that the building is completely secure. Tucker and Jazz have both come up to Chicago for this, and Tucker has fiddled with the security so that no one can get in without his say so. Sam shows them the results of the tests she’s been running the last few days, the re-growth of synaptic connections in mice who have been bred for the Alzheimer’s gene. It’s successful in theory, and she thinks that it will actually work. To that end, Sam is prepared to do…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry to say there are no more notes to this, and I seem to have stopped in the middle of a thought. I honestly have no idea where it was going, or if it would even have a properly happy end. I'm pretty sure that something as long as this I would have gone for a happy ending, though. It was probably going to be something like Sam's own research will cure what Tucker's stolen efforts ruined, and Section 9 would be dealt with accordingly. As for the relationships? No idea for anything concrete. It might well have just been a hopeful end, instead of a truly happy ending.


	4. A Matter of Trust

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Feel free to adopt.

Maddie stumbles across Danny’s secret, and the repercussions are astounding. She doesn’t know how to tell him, so instead she starts finding reasons to keep him grounded, so that he can't damage the town anymore. She doesn’t trust him, no matter that she doesn’t know how she can't. But when a big old nasty comes to town Danny begins to understand what Maddie is doing, and why, and finally just gets fed up with it and reveals it all to both parents so that he can save amity park.


	5. The Tub Incident

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Feel free to adopt.

Danny stops by one night like he normally does and Sam is in the tub, taking a nice hot bubble bath with a good book (smutty of course) and possibly something alcoholic. Or maybe fizzy water in a wine glass. Yeah, so Danny can assume and get embarrassed when she corrects him.

He’ll stop by, look for her, call her name, and she’ll hear him and sort of freak. Splashing noises ensue, and the accidentally knocks the glass to the floor and it breaks while she’s trying to grab a towel. And Danny hears it and comes charging through the door expecting to have to put a major hurting on a ghost for bugging Sam, and only finds a naked, wet, and bubble covered Sam who’s trying to get herself covered with a towel.

Talk about your blushy moments.

Naturally he’ll go gah at it, then red, then run away and they can avoid each other for like, a week. Maybe two. And Tucker will wonder what happened. And trick them into the same place so they’re all three together, and then he can ask them if they kissed for real, they deny, well did you have a date that went bad, nope, no dates at all. Then what the hell is the problem, because you’re acting like you’ve seen each other naked.

Major redness, then Tucker needling them trying to find out, and Sam gets pissed and starts yelling at Danny telling him he’s a perv and he needs to

I’m sure Tucker will get it out of Danny eventually, but it’ll be a little more difficult for him and Sam to make up.


	6. Tucker's Wish

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Feel free to adopt.

Tucker makes a wish. Specific and yet, general. “I wish some people,” he’s thinking of Danny and Sam and them only, “would see what’s right in front of them.” He’s irritated that Danny and Sam still, even in their senior year, after three whole years of Tucker trying to get them to do something, are still avoiding it.

Alas, Desiree heard, and the next day Danny’s secret is out. A ghost shows up in the cafeteria, possibly the Box Ghost, but I think something new and stronger so Danny actually has to show off his fighting skill, and he sneaks off to turn ghost, then fights, leaves, and comes back as Fenton.

But when he comes back the whispers start, everyone is staring as he heads for Tucker and Sam and join them. He asks the two what’s going on, does he have a kick me sign on his back again? And they shrug, don’t know why people are staring and all.

Then Paulina comes over and confronts him. “Danny, why didn’t you tell me you were the ghost boy?” And Danny stammers a refusal and Paulina says, “Everyone saw you.”

He looks up panicked and sees everyone watching him, and realizes it’s true. The cat’s out of the bag, and he looks back at Tucker and Sam as they stare on in shock. Danny will just wink out as he goes invisible and intangible and flies out.

Tucker will set it right in the end, Danny and Sam tell him he has to un-wish it, and he does, but with a twist. He wishes that no one remembers what happened except for him, Danny and Sam, so that they’ll remember the way they already confessed how they feel.


	7. What Happens in Dreams

1

Beginning of senior year. The dreams have been going on for more than a month, both of them act odd around each other, but not too much more than they usually do. Lead in with this, some info regarding dreams, college discussion, GPA discussion. Some updating on where they stand now, where Jazz is, and bring in the fact that Danny has improved with his ghost fighting. Also, that he’s practicing leaving the recurring trouble makers in the thermos for extended periods of time. (This includes Skulker and the Box Ghost. Probably Technus, and I can picture him doing his damndest to put Vlad in.)

2

Sex Ed class they’re forced to take. And the fact that of all of the students, all three of them raise their hands establishing virginity. (It was a voluntary raising of hands, and after Sam confidently thrust hers up, a few other people did, and Danny just sighed as Sam looked at him inquiringly and put his hand up while realizing he was never going to hear the end of it from the A-List, and Tucker joined in with a shrug. Also, Danny considering the dreams as he does this.) And segue it into a sweaty smutty dream that night.

3

Beginning of October and Danny gets razzed in the locker room after gym about the claw marks on his back, which concerns Danny. He passes it off to Tucker as ghost fight thing, takes the wild chick remarks from everyone else, and is confused when it looks like something he earned in a dream the night before. And Sam’s remarks on it when she asks and Danny refuses to show her, where she acts all whatever but it really hurt. And move to following Sam through the rest of the day, where the wild girl is decided to be Sam. And have her have a great dream that night. And one where he tells her he loves her. To which she says don’t say that. And she says it’s just a dream, it’s not real. And he says what does it matter? It’s their dream, and he does love her. It shreds before she tells him how she feels.

4

Halloween time, Sam is officially sick. She starts to beg of trick or treating fun (high school thing, a haunted house for the elementary school) but decides to go at the last moment. Have her being a touch sick, Tucker finding her tossing her cookies in a bush, then Danny flying her home. Another dream, and Danny is concerned about her this time. She’s sick, she needs to take care of herself.

5

Move it straight into December, first week, and Sam is still sick. Guys are worried beyond belief, and since she looks much paler than she normally does it’s something that has them really upset. Scared on Danny’s part. Gym, she’s trying to participate, and after the mock volleyball game is over there’s a fifteen minute free time for whatever they want. A game of pickup basketball starts at one end and the trio heads for the other end to avoid the mass activity. Tossing around a ball and suddenly Sam sways as she stands, drops the ball. “Are you alright?” Tucker calls worriedly. “Do you need a pass?” Danny asks as they rush to her. She shakes her head, then pales to straight white. “I don’t feel so good,” she says faintly, and drops like a bag of rocks. Danny catches her before her head hits, he gets an impressive bruise because of it, and Tucker gets a teacher, and Sam is taken to the nurse’s office.

6

Spans a week where Sam isn’t in school, not answering anything (phone, cell, e-mail) and they’re turned away from her door with prejudice. And when Danny invades her room one night, she’s not even there. In the house at all, either. Go through the week with their worries, fears, speculation. From long lasting stomach flu to life threatening diseases. Toss in that Danny’s dreams have stopped.

7

Sam comes back the next Monday acting very strange, and definitely drawing away from them. She’s hiding the secret, terrified to tell anyone. She’s 17, two months pregnant, and her parents are trying to disinherit her because of it. They can’t, Grandma Manson has them blocked on one side, and on the other she insists that she’s never had sex before in her life. So we’ll span a week with Sam having issues at school because of what’s going on, and at home because her parents are furious with her. And the fact that Danny and Tucker confront her together Friday morning, wanting to know what the hell. And she tells them there’s nothing wrong. All parties know it’s a lie, but they back off. And open with Sam’s dreams have stopped.

8

She’s reclusive through Christmas holidays, only going out when she’s seriously bugged. Mostly hiding in her room as she hears her parents fighting, and the names they call her echoing through the house and her head. Will detail one confrontation where her mother slaps her, and she’s called a good for nothing slut. A whore, not worthy of the things she’s been given. And Sam screams back at them that she didn’t do anything and runs. Goes to Danny’s, and is taken in without question. He calls Tucker, tells him Sam’s passed out there. And it looks like someone hit her.

9

Beginning of January, before school starts. Sam has been at Danny’s and Tucker’s nonstop, avoiding her house now since that one night. She’ll come back late the day after new years. Not super late. Maybe 10-ish, and there will be another confrontation. The names fly again, and Sam fights back verbally. And she’s told she’s a whore, she doesn’t know who the father is so how many boys has she slept with? And Sam reiterates she’s never had sex, and her father tosses she’s a liar as well as promiscuous, unless she wants to try and say she’s carrying the next messiah. She tells them she hates them, why won’t they believe her? And her mother hits her again, screaming for her to get out, never come back. She flees into the snow. They bring Danny into it, and she defends him.

10

We find Sam crying in the snow covered backyard of Fenton Works, and sometimes after 1 am. Danny’s coming back from a hunt (successful with a thermos full of vultures in fez’s with a tendency to Yiddish) and he’s getting ready to phase into his house when he hears the crying, investigates, and finds a half frozen Sam. Takes her in, warms her up, comforts her and gets totally pissed about the bruise on her cheek, wondering who hit her, why she took it, if she fought back. After she’s asleep, he calls Tucker, and they decide to find answers since she refuses to share.

11

Answers come a couple days alter when Danny tells her she has to go home sometime, school’s starting, and she refuses. So he begins to wonder if her family did it to her. It would certainly fit why she didn’t fight back, why she’s hiding it. But why? And she can’t keep staying with Danny, so Tucker manages to sneak over to her house when her parents are to (Danny spied for that) and talks to her grandma. Grandma Manson won’t tell him details, just tells him to wait a minute, she has something for him to give Sam, and if he thought he could manage it, her parents were leaving for Chicago in the morning and a strong back would be needed to help Sam move. He’s confused when she hands him a thick manila envelope, and he takes it to Sam, who opens it and starts crying. Danny takes it and reads it. Her grandma has stopped them from disinheriting her, and has already released her shares of the company to her, even though she’s not 18 for several more months. And she hands him another paper, a lease on a 2 bedroom apartment between Danny and Tucker’s houses, in Grandma Manson’s name, but subleased to Sam. Asks them if they’ll help her move as Tucker understands. And still, more questions unanswered.

12

School starts back up, Sam is in her own place, and that is now the premier hangout for the trio. And Sam is still acting odd, and no longer wearing things that are snug. She wears bulky sweatshirts and sweaters. But they don’t ask, don’t even think of why that’s changed. Until the rumors start. That Sam has been kicked out. “Did you hear? The goth freak got kicked out of her house?” “I heard it’s because she was doing drugs.” “No, it’s because she was stealing her family’s money.” And then the big one that makes Sam afraid. “I heard it’s because she got pregnant, and doesn’t know who the father is.” And the guys confront her at the end of January. “Sam, something’s wrong. What happened?” And she’ll tell them she’s pregnant.

13

This is where they ask her why didn’t she just tell them? And she tells them she was afraid of their reactions. They understand, after her family took it so badly, and they don’t blame her. They worry. Ask her who the father is. And she tells them she doesn’t know. Exchange of glances, and they wrap arms around her. Then she tells them she doesn’t even know how she’s pregnant. She’s never had sex. And they believe her automatically. When she asks how they can, they only reply that with the things that happen in their lives, anything is possible. Pause, then Danny adds thoughtfully, “Except for Paulina growing a personality.” And behind it all, Sam keeps thinking to how the dreams stopped when she found out she was pregnant. Like even her dream Danny didn’t want anything to do with her.

14

Guys close ranks around Sam, trying to stop the rumors, even by instigating fights. They do some researching. Rule out her being drugged, discuss rohypnol, from Tucker’s end of the search for answers. And Danny begins to scour the ghost zone for answers. Kidnaps Vlad in the thermos. Will be funny. Especially since Vlad assumes Danny knocked her up. And Sam is starting to show, and the guys are definitely being protective. Tucker because she’s like a sister, Danny because he loves her. Even with a fatherless child. He only wishes he could have prevented the stress on her. And after this have the first new dream sequence, with dream Danny being obsessive of her new body and telling her he loves her no matter what. Toss in that the rumors have evolved to it being Danny’s love child.  In the dream sequence Sam asks him if he’s repulsed by her, by the fact that she’s pregnant, that it’s not his. And he’ll only kiss her and lay a hand over the place that isn’t perfectly flat anymore and tell her, “I wish. I really wish.”

15

Middle of February and there’s a blizzard down from Canada. They’re parked at Sam’s on a Saturday evening, and get juvenile by playing truth or dare. Somehow the subject of the dreams comes up, and they admit to having dreamt of each other. Tucker is curious, but lets it be for a bit. Then finally gets Danny to pull a dare after he’s forgotten about the no dare since the dream thing policy. And Tucker dares him to tell about the dreams. And Danny turns red, says they were vivid, and leaves it at that. And that’s the night the first ghost power pops up, though no one notices it at first. Sam drops a plate, not because it slipped like everyone assumed, but because her hand went intangible. Rumors about Danny’s being the father have continued.

16

End of February, they’re at the park watching people skate on the ring that’s been set up. Sam is now nearly 5 months, and beginning to show more. School is difficult with the rumors, and the fact that she can’t truly deny she’s pregnant. She’s pushed the admin off since she turned 18 already, and she’s not due until the beginning of July. Bring up more about issues with her family, their attempts to continue blocking her inheritance and all. The fact that they offered to pay for an abortion, would accept her back if she did it. And then there is the appearance of the Box Ghost at lunch. And the fact that Danny’s ghost sense goes off, and so does the same reaction come from Sam. There’s real fear as he and Tucker have noticed, but Danny has to go before anything happens. Sam leaves school, and Danny follows her. Tuckerless.

17

He finds her pale in her apartment, and drops down and changes back to Fenton. “They weren’t just dreams, were they?” she asks as she looks up at him. He’s pale too, and says, “They have to be.” They compare notes, get over the shock and realize that a combination of sleepwalking (flying) and lust have done this. Neither of them bring up the fact that he told her he loved her in the dreams, or that she never said it. Tucker shows, there is discussion.

18

Massive weirdness for a few days, Danny and Sam avoiding each other, and then he comes to her one night. They both say they’re not ready, fear speaking loudly, and he tells her he can make it go away, referring to the pregnancy. How hard would it be for him to go intangible and disturb the fetus enough that it aborts? Not hard. And she’ll agree to it, and he’ll start to. And then stop before he can do it, and look up at her and see her crying, and he’s on the verge of tears himself. “I can’t do it, Sam. I just can’t do it.” She’ll wrap her arms around herself and say, “I don’t want you to. I’m sorry, Danny, I’m so sorry,” and he’ll hold her as she cries and probably end up crying a little himself.

19

The dreams have stopped again, and by the end of March Danny knows he has to tell his family. Sam doesn’t want him to, better that everyone think the baby’s fatherless than to let his secret out, but Tucker sides with Danny. Let a week or two pass as Sam tries to change Danny’s mind, then him telling her one day as they’re walking home from school that he’s telling them today, and that he wants her to come with him. Tucker too. Since they’ve been in it from the beginning. So he takes Sam home, and this is the first time the Fenton’s have really laid eyes on her in a while, and she is showing to an extent. Is 6 months, and they’re immediately concerned. He tells them to sit down, he has something to tell them. They’re expecting it by now, and he drops the bomb that it’s his. No mention of love, though he wants desperately to shout that he loves her. But she still hasn’t said anything about love or the fat that he told her when it was dreams. And then he tells them that he’s got something else to tell them.

20

He explains that he doesn’t want them to think he was being stupid, not careful, or anything like that. It was an accident, and in all honesty, neither of them knew what had happened in the first place. Without warning and the cryptic explanation, he becomes Phantom, and there’s the general uproar. Danny shields Sam out of habit when Jack jumps up, and Tucker starts to shield Danny, but it doesn’t come to that. “I thought it was just dreams. We both did,” he says helplessly. And his mother understands. “You used to sleepwalk when you were little.” And there it is. Acceptance, and support. And later when Danny takes her home, he stops at her door and tells her in the dark that he meant what he said. It was more true because it was only dreams then, and he means it. Kisses her gently and goes ghost and flies off.

21

They’re closer now, and the Fenton’s try to involve her. The Danny/Sam lovechild thing flies, neither denies it, and when the principal and VP (Lancer) call them to the office to question them, encourage them to do certain things—possibly adoption—and Danny and Sam tell them very evenly that it’s none of their business, and it’s taken care of already. Whatever that means. Adoption is out of the question. The baby has definitely inherited Danny’s ghost powers. Include another incident that’s more noticeable and leads to another fight in the cafeteria between Danny and an OC jock. Danny doesn’t get suspended, though, when he points out that the jock has pushed Sam. It’s let go.

22

Graduation at end of May, Sam is now almost 8 months. Walks the stage, and finally tells Danny that even though she never said it, she does. And he understands. Segue into Danny/Tucker action, where he tells Tucker what Sam said, and that he wants to marry her. Tucker says it’s a little strange to have her pregnant without dating her at all. And even more strange to be picking out a ring without dating her at all. (Shopping for rings ensues.)

23

To the end of June with Danny and Sam being more cozy and comfy with each other, but no dating, and no dreams—those are being rigorously guarded to the point that Danny has something rigged to tie him to his bed so he can’t drift without knowing it. Danny has been trying to ask her. He knows he loves her. He knows she loves him. But somehow he still has issues with asking her to marry him. Even though Jazz and Tucker are all for it, and try to help. Into the celebration of the Fourth, and Sam’s water breaking.

24

Danny pops the question at an inopportune moment, while she’s in the middle of labor, and we’ll play in this chapter with that. And work in the yes. After she finishes killing him for doing this to her.

25

It’s a boy. Black hair, duh, dark, dark blue eyes that border on purple. A nice mix. Danny holding the baby while she sleeps. Things like that. And then she wakes up. “Did you really ask me to marry you?” He nods his head. “Did you really say yes?” She nods. Mushy stuff. He gives her the ring. Confesses he’s had it for months, practically. “I love you, Sam. I really do.”

26

Stupid epilogue type chapter. Wrapping up a few loose ends. Something soft, new parents. Afraid but entirely too adoring. And in love. Newlyweds. Surprise that one. Danny was feeding him. Heard him crying while he was doing something. Wants to let Sam sleep. Hmm. Maybe he was out fighting a ghost, imply that he stopped by to check on baby and Sam. But she’ll find him and tell him to come back to bed. She misses him. Glint of matching rings. So on.


	8. The Yearbook

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Feel free to adopt.

Every year Danny goes through his yearbook, looks at the pictures. But at the end of his junior year he finds one that opens his eyes: the trio. Danny and Tucker laughing at something. Sam a little bit separated and staring at Danny with her heart in her eyes. It spurs him into action and forces him to confront his growing feelings. Spans four weeks.


	9. Sealed

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Feel free to adopt, but if you do drop me a line to discuss thoughts?

A thought: Danny has enough and Danny phantom disappears whilst Danny Fenton seals his lips concerning ghost powers forever. Even if it means cutting ties with Sam and Tucker who think he's wrong.


	10. The Tempest

Summer before senior year Danny gets really roughed up in a ghost fight. Ends up in ER with stitches to head, gashes in back and side, and more down back of left shoulder. Concussion, pretty good one, requires overnight stay. The concussion thing is done with Sam holding up fingers and asking how many, and Danny replying very quietly four. She only held two up. Then when he tries to sit up he groans and they realize he really is hurt. More so as the blood starts soaking through his hair and dripping down his neck, and then face when he pitches forward, dizzy.

But the blow either knocks sense into him, or the shyness out of him, because he quits letting himself get bullied and treated like crap at school. And Sam and Tucker, too. He stands up to people, takes them down verbally, and eventually physically when he finds Sam being harassed by a made up A-Lister. Dude is trying to get her to go out with him, and she’s refusing, and he refuses to take no as an answer, so Danny jumps all over him, shoving him back and telling him to get away from her. Dude is all over Danny saying, “I was talking to her, not you,” and Danny tells him that she said no, and there’s a fight.

Make it that the initial change is noticeable, but not truly worrisome. And as the months wear on things get really noticeable, culminating with the night Danny pops into Sam’s room as Phantom and she freaks at him because she’s wearing a towel. He responds, “If I really wanted to see you undressed, you wouldn’t be able to stop me.” And then at her pale and frightened expression he’ll just laugh and say he could poke his head through her wall, her ceiling. Not that he wants to force her. And then he’ll shrug and say, “Besides, this isn’t what I had in mind for seeing you like that.” And she’ll get startled and ask him what that’s supposed to mean, and he’ll ask her, “Do you want the truth, the real truth? Or a pretty made up lie?” She’ll opt for truth and he’ll stalk to her, backing her into a wall and caging her in with his arms in either side of her head as he leans close enough that a breath is all that separates their mouths. “Because the first time I see you naked, I want you to be writhing underneath me and screaming my name.”

This drives Sam to calling Tucker, freaking out and upset, and they go see Clockwork, who explains that it will pass in time. It’s a ghostly puberty thing, and Danny is sacrificing pieces of his humanity to stop himself from losing complete control over his powers as they grow and change. They wonder if he knows what’s going on, or if that’s a piece that is missing. Tucker gets to see exactly what happened, and then they get to see a current image of Danny floating above the city alone, above the clouds. He looks upset, really upset, and scared. They understand that he doesn’t like this, he knows exactly what’s going on, but that he can’t change what’s happening because he might hurt someone. To which Clockwork shows them some excerpts from his last battle, which ends in three ghost vultures being three steaming piles of ectoplasm. Nothing left over. Clockwork tells them it’ll pass soon, and makes a passing comment that perhaps they should be careful of the games they play in the meantime.

So they try to go on with it, and toss in some escalating changes beyond that, beyond the fight at school. It’s a really noticeable thing now.

 

He ends up getting caught out as Danny Phantom, not because he’s standing up for himself and all, but because there’s an accident and Danny saves Dash. He has no other choice, he can’t let Dash die just to protect his secret identity. Maybe truth or dare before revealed. Maybe that’s why Dash is in danger, he got dared something stupid and actually did it?

Before that though, Danny could have a really wicked grin as he asks Sam truth or dare, and she’ll want out of the game because she just knows he’s going to do something bad, no matter what she chooses. And he will. If she picks truth he’s going to ask her how she really feels about him, and if she picks dare, he’s going to dare her to kiss him.


	11. Any Place But Home

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Feel free to adopt. I also want to add that I know there is nothing in the show that even implies this.

Sam cutting. Danny catches her at it one night when he stops in to check on her before going home after a patrol. He checks regularly, and mostly she’s sleeping. Sometimes on her computer. Once doing _that_ with her little vibrating friend (he split fast that night and could barely look her in the eyes for a week). Sometimes he stops by because she asked him to, or he hits her house before patrols. For help with homework. To talk. Whatever

After the masturbation invasion: and never mind that he had to go home and spend an hour under cold water after that, or that he hadn’t slept at all for days because wondering who she had fantasized about made him sick to his stomach.

Sam cuts because she’s lost control of the rest of her life. Her mother… has bowed before a sick, abusive, alcoholic husband. A husband who can’t stand her, or their daughter. And Sam is on the brunt because she’s the kind of girl who’s in your face about who she is. She isn’t going to change for anyone or anything. (Which is why she loves Danny so, he never tries to change her.) Her father calls her ungrateful, a disgrace (despite her prefect grades), a whore, a slut, a liar. Things like that.

Sam refuses to tell Danny why she does it, just kind of wilts under his anger. Danny finds out the hard way—her father blows a gasket while Danny is over. It’s school related, and her father isn’t supposed to be home. He’s supposed to be in Japan till the end of the month, but he comes home early for some reason. Confrontation. Dad gets pissy with Sam, calls her names and takes a smack at her in front of Danny. Who reacts as you can imagine a lovesick boy is going to do when his lady is injured.

But that’s the only place Sam isn’t more than strong. She’s great with everything else. Ghost fighting, school. Her protests. That’s why no one knew about it for so long. That, and because her daddy is a good actor.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [A Matter of Trust (You Are So Grounded For Your Afterlife, Mister!)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14935266) by [Kentucky_Wallflower](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kentucky_Wallflower/pseuds/Kentucky_Wallflower)




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